Chapter 5: Beaverton

It spread only a few inches across the top of the toe line of the white leather Air Jordan X, but it was wide enough and long enough for Michael Jordan to put his foot down.

"We were in a hotel room, and Michael takes one look at the shoe and said, 'I hate it,' " recalled Tinker Hatfield, Nike's vice president of innovation and the primary designer for the Air Jordan line. "I was kind of taken aback by it. I was like, he should just be thankful I kept it going because he wasn't playing basketball anymore."

This was the summer of 1994. The recently retired Bull was chasing curveballs for the Birmingham Barons. The prevailing thought around Nike was that Jordan would never wear his signature shoes on an NBA court again.

Once Hatfield had finished the shoe and authorized production of the first run, he tracked down Jordan to show him the results. Hatfield was proud, particularly of the 10 bands on the sole that included a phrase about Jordan's accomplishments.

Jordan was unimpressed.

"Part of it was Michael wasn't involved in any of the Air Jordan X," Hatfield said. "About the tip of the shoe, he said, 'I hate that a lot,' and [he] got upset: 'If that shoe doesn't sell as many as the year before, you're making up the difference out of your pocket.' "

Hatfield quickly returned to Nike headquarters. "We have a problem," he told his team. Jordan's demand to have the stripe removed -- which would require restarting production halfway through -- had never been done at Nike.

"That was the first and last time," Hatfield said.

"It ended up selling OK so I was off the hook."

Hatfield just shook his head and laughed as he shot a glance at the giant mural of Jordan, MJ keeping watch on his designer as a constant reminder of the keen eye the world's most famous athlete keeps on Nike business involving his name.

Jordan has never been a silent partner in his role as endorser extraordinaire for Nike, a fact now appreciated more than tolerated.

"I think Tinker and our design team and Nike, as a general rule, prefer to deal with athletes who have strong opinions about what he or she wants, and [Jordan] certainly has that," Knight told the Tribune during a visit to the sprawling Nike campus.

Knight built Blue Ribbon Sports, which made $3,240 in its first year of operation in 1964, into Nike, a sports and commercial powerhouse responsible for $19.2 billion in revenues last year. He rarely grants interviews but made an exception to talk about Jordan, the 21-year-old kid who preferred Converse and Adidas over Nikes when Knight first asked him to try on a pair in 1984.

They have grown close over the quarter-century that followed. Knight has been there for the ups -- when the Bulls won Jordan's first NBA championship in 1991.

And he has been there for the downs -- the funeral of Jordan's father, James, in 1993. Knight describes the sight of a weeping Jordan as seeing " Superman in tears."

Of all the special times, Knight's fondest memory is of an ordinary moment savored by his extraordinary friend.

1992. Jordan had won his second NBA title and a gold medal with the Dream Team in Barcelona. Knight treated some members of that team to a Hawaiian vacation. A jet-lagged Jordan walked through the airport in Hawaii holding youngest son Marcus, a toddler at the time, on his shoulders as the boy drooled all over Jordan's bald head.

Jordan just kept walking -- and smiling.

"He had the biggest grin on his face and I was thinking, here is someone as successful as a man can be. Michael Jordan, family man, human being," Knight said. "That was just a warm memory for me."

There have been countless others for Knight during a corporate and cultural odyssey alongside Jordan that has resulted in a legendary shoe line and, now, Jordan Brand, a division of Nike.

"One of the things I'm most proud of as a businessman is how we took an endorsement -- albeit a great endorsement -- and turned it into a brand," Knight said. "It certainly hasn't been done at this level anyplace before. Five years after he was done playing, the Jordan Brand [sold] more than when he [was] playing."

For the first time since it was established 12 years ago, Jordan Brand is on track to sell $1 billion worth of merchandise.

"How far can this brand go?" Knight asked rhetorically. "Clearly it can be much bigger than it is now."

Jordan never could have envisioned that kind of commercial success when he begrudgingly visited Nike's corporate headquarters, then just a few buildings outside Portland, Ore.

In the fall of '84, Jordan had just signed his rookie contract and was coming off a gold-medal experience in Los Angeles. He was more interested in getting some sleep than talking some swoosh.

He had met with Nike officials at a Beverly Hills hotel during the Games. Former Nike marketing representative Sonny Vaccaro introduced a ground-breaking idea: a signature shoe for Jordan. It was certainly enticing, but Jordan wore Converse at North Carolina and Adidas everywhere else. As agent David Falk said in a September interview on " Chicago Tribune Live," Jordan preferred to sign with Adidas.

Jordan's interest in Nike was lukewarm, and he urged his parents to go to Oregon without him.

"Michael didn't even want to be here, but his mother and father put a stop to that," said Howard White, the vice president of marketing for Jordan Brand, who was at the original meeting. "They said, 'We are going to Oregon.' So Michael was in Oregon. And I'm still not sure he cared. He didn't like Nikes."

Nike liked Mike enough to develop a prototype shoe. He liked the idea of having an entire ad campaign built around his own shoe and that Nike was interested in him for more than his obvious basketball talents.

"I think it was the total package," Knight said.

"The great smile and looks. ... If you were in the business, you would have been insane not to want him because he had a great flair to his game."

Converse already had struck deals with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson for its Weapon line and didn't need Jordan, certainly not as badly as Nike did. That Nike was a corporate underdog with maverick tendencies appealed to Jordan's competitiveness.

"While we had a lot of really good players, he was going to be the one who really personified the brand," Knight said. "By the time Michael came out, we had decided he was the one. Two years before that, I don't know if you would have said that, but when he said he was coming out [after his junior year] and as soon as he signed [an NBA] contract, we knew it was going to be him."

Before long, the way corporations dealt with athletes was changed forever. A monster of sports and commerce had been created, and he wore a No. 23 Bulls jersey.

"That was the first time anyone said here was an individual we'll pay to represent a company through their own signature product," White said. "There was no signature product prior to Michael Jordan."

Jordan signed the 22-page deal with Nike on Oct. 14, 1984. It is on display inside the building on Nike's campus bearing his name.

The original Air Jordan, designed by Peter Moore, violated the NBA's uniform code. Its black, red and white scheme threatened to cost Jordan some green -- $5,000 each game he wore them. Nike, which always has embraced an anti-establishment persona under Knight, happily paid the fines and even built an ad campaign around the idea that Air Jordans were so good, the NBA deemed them illegal.

"Most kids want what they can't have, so it was great," White said. "There were a lot of things that had to come together to start off right."

By 1987, a successful product launch had turned into a pop-culture phenomenon.

For Air Jordan III, Nike hired filmmaker and basketball fanatic Spike Lee to make a commercial with Jordan, marking the beginning of an unexpected but undeniable bond linking Lee -- a devoted Knicks fan -- with Jordan -- the Knicks' nemesis.

Shooting in black and white, Lee reprised his alter ego Mars Blackmon from the film "She's Gotta Have It." As he famously told Jordan, "It's gotta be the shoes." Jim Riswold, the copywriter responsible for the "Bo Knows" phrase, came up with the line that stuck in the heads of youths all over America.

The revolutionary commercial was matched by the shoe itself. The Air Jordan III was the first of its kind to include an air window in the sole, a tab in the back and -- at Jordan's request -- a mid-cut that split the difference between a high- and low-top.

"He didn't think he needed the high-top but was nervous about going with the low-top, so we created this," Hatfield said.

It struck a chord with Jordan that Hatfield patterned the shoe after a black panther, with black leather over a pawlike sole. Hatfield recalls Jordan getting a tear in his eye because kids called him "black cat" growing up.

This was a critical time in Jordan's relationship with Nike. Rumors abounded that he was ready to leave the company. But the Air Jordan III was the first to feature the Jumpman logo. Jordan had direct input on the specifications and from that point on, his involvement in the creation of every shoe increased.

So Jordan kept pushing and Hatfield kept designing, drawing inspiration from myriad places. For the Jordan V, a bomber from a John Wayne movie. The Jordan XII, a pair of Gucci shoes. The Jordan XIV, loosely based on a Ferrari.

The ah-ha moment for Hatfield's favorite shoe, the Jordan XI, developed after he looked at a lawnmower.

"It was glossy, shiny and had a different top from bottom, and for years, Michael had talked to me about doing a shiny basketball shoe," Hatfield said.

The stylish black-and-white combination pleased Jordan so much he predicted kids would begin wearing the XI with tuxedos. When Boyz II Men showed up in formalwear and the shoes for the 1995 American Music Awards, Hatfield's phone rang.

"MJ called me up and said, 'Told ya.' "

For Hatfield, one meeting with baseball star Alex Rodriguez best reflects the impact Air Jordans have made in the last 25 years.

Nike officials had flown to Miami in 1994 to woo Rodriguez, then a naïve teen sensation ready to burst into Major League Baseball with the Seattle Mariners.

As negotiations over a multimillion-dollar deal were ongoing, A-Rod asked to be heard: If he agreed to Nike's offer, could he could get a pair of Air Jordan VIIs, circa 1992?

"When we said of course, Alex got emotional," Hatfield recalled. "It seems when he was young, he wanted those shoes, but his mom couldn't afford them. That's how much those shoes meant to him ... and so many others."

Steve Prefontaine was the first athlete to endorse the internationally recognized Nike swoosh when Blue Ribbon Sports adopted a new name and logo in 1972. A native of Coos Bay, Ore., and a graduate of the University of Oregon like Knight, Prefontaine used to send Nike running shoes to runners along with notes of encouragement. The free-spirited runner never lost a race on his home course in college and finished fourth in the 5,000-meter run in the 1972 Munich Olympics.

He was killed in a car accident in 1975 at 24. Knight has eulogized Pre as "the soul" of Nike.

Spend a few days walking around Nike's pristine 193-acre campus, with its 17 buildings named after athletes, and there is no doubting that the love for and devotion to Jordan exceeds that of any other athlete -- besides Prefontaine.

The line to get into the auditorium to hear Jordan speak during the "23 Celebrates 25" tribute June 16 stretched for at least a quarter mile. Those among the 5,500 employees who couldn't get in were allowed to watch the ceremony on closed-circuit TV. Jeff Jordan, Michael's oldest son and former Illinois basketball player, started his summer job that day. He got a pretty good seat for an intern.

Jordan visits for Nike's quarterly meetings, when he likes to rib officials about why his Jordan Brand staff works in the Jerry Rice Building.

"I always felt this all was bigger than a shoe," White said. "So one day, I think after Michael's first retirement, I said to Phil, 'Man, why can't we make this a brand?' Phil said, 'The guy isn't playing anymore. Why do you think we can make this a brand?' "

White paused and took a deep breath for effect.

"I said, 'Because I just happened to be walking down the street in front of campus the other day, and a Mercedes-Benz came by,' " White continued. "And Phil said, 'What does that have to do with anything?' And I said, 'Because I think Mr. Mercedes is dead and they're still making Mercedes-Benz.'

"He said, 'Point well taken.' "

Jordan has played for two NBA teams but has represented only one shoe company.

And of the Phils central to Jordan's life, Knight has given him direction longer than Jackson.

"It's just been such an incredible journey that neither one of us could have envisioned," Knight said. "You go through all the ups and downs, the trials and the struggles. ... It's been a fabulous ride."